# Permission Errors **URL:** \ **Category:** Beats\ **Tags:** filebeat\ **Created:** [May 11, 2017, 8:46pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/permission-errors/85479 "2017-05-11T20:46:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Scott\_Robinson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Scott\_Robinson](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Scott_Robinson)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2017, 8:46pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/permission-errors/85479/1 "2017-05-11T20:46:51Z")
Howdy, Can I get filebeat to ignore permission errors and carry on reading other files? 2017-05-11T20:41:19Z ERR Failed opening /var/log/mediator/sysman.log: open /var/log/mediator/sysman.log: permission denied 2017-05-11T20:41:19Z ERR Stop Harvesting. Unexpected file opening error: open /var/log/mediator/sysman.log: permission denied If it reaches a file it cannot read, it will just stop completely. ---
**Author:** ![Scott\_Robinson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Scott\_Robinson](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Scott_Robinson)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2017, 8:38pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/permission-errors/85479/2 "2017-05-13T20:38:24Z")
Bump ---
**Author:** ![Xavy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Xavy](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Xavy)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2017, 10:05pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/permission-errors/85479/3 "2017-05-13T22:05:18Z")
Hello: You exclude particular files within a previously configured log path. For instance if you added the default path: ``` paths: - /var/log/*.log ``` You could add the below configuration (which is already present on config file but commented): ``` # Exclude files. A list of regular expressions to match. Filebeat drops the files that # are matching any regular expression from the list. By default, no files are dropped. exclude_files: ['^/var/log/mediator/sysman.log$'] ``` Please note that you would to do this for every file you wished to include (or define a regular expression matching all of them, and only those to exlude) Additionally if you do want to add this logs to what filebeat sends, you could add filebeat user to the group owning that file/folder. It will depend on the permissions but it would de really strange if then filebeat could not read the file. Obviously the ideal solution would be devels creating a PR correcting this for future versions, but this workaround should be good enough to keep things working. ---
**Author:** ![steffens](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/steffens/32/79630_2.png) [@steffens](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/steffens)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2017, 10:20am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/permission-errors/85479/4 "2017-05-14T10:20:21Z")
Feel free to open a [bug report](https://github.com/elastic/beats/issues) for filebeat stopping if some files are not readable. ---
**Author:** ![Scott\_Robinson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Scott\_Robinson](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Scott_Robinson)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2017, 12:15pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/permission-errors/85479/5 "2017-05-14T12:15:00Z")
Thanks both for your suggestions - Much appreciated. Exclude files would work temporarily, but filebeat would then 'break' again if someone decided to add another application that doesn't have the correct permissions... But I might give that one a try 🙂 I shall submit a bug report now - Thank you. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2017, 12:23pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/permission-errors/85479/6 "2017-06-11T12:23:28Z")
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